Theme Panel: Identity Politics and the 2016 US Presidential Election

APSA

9 months ago

Identity Politics and the 2016 US Presidential Election

Even though Hillary Clinton received almost 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump, the post-election story focused on “identity politics” as the primary culprit in Clinton’s defeat in the Electoral College. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin tipped the electoral college in Donald Trump’s favor with just seventy-seven thousand votes among them, with many scholars and pundits pointing to dissatisfied white rural communities as the engine of Donald Trump’s nationalist agenda. Donald Trump kicked off his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and promising to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. Prior to the Iowa Caucus, Trump announced a plan to register all Muslims in the country, and ban travel from Muslim countries.